Inside the Collections: Paleontology and the Big Bone Room

Paleontology Collections Manager Carl Mehling gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the Big Bone Room, which houses some of the largest items in the Paleontology collection. Its holdings include one of the largest complete limb bones in the world: the 650-pound thigh bone of the long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur Camarasaurus. More than 3 million specimens make up the Museum's world-class paleontology collections, and only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The rest are stored behind the scenes, where they continue to be studied by Museum scientists and their colleagues.